Abel Tesfaye has been quiet. Since dropping his My Dear Melancholy EP in March of 2018, the Toronto R&B megastar better known as The Weeknd, has largely stayed out of the spotlight. Except for vague rumblings about a new album called Chapter VI and a high-profile placement on a Game of Thrones soundtrack, we’ve heard little in the way of fresh Weeknd releases. This prolonged silence ended when the new single “Blinding Lights” appeared in a new Mercedes-Benz commercial on November 24th — within the week, both “Blinding Lights and “Heartless” saw a commercial release. Sporting a new look and announcing “a new brain-melting, psychotic chapter” in his career, it seems that The Weeknd has officially begun the rollout for his fourth major-label album.
That promise is a bit misleading, though. Instead of dramatic shifts in style, like the ones that vaulted him from the spacey brooding of his first mixtapes to his current pop stardom, The Weeknd has chosen to refine and update the aesthetic he’s already established. “Heartless” borders on a by-the-numbers Weeknd single: its standard structure, lyrics about drowning in vices, and chorus of “all this money and this pain got me heartless” could have come from one of Tesfaye’s many lesser imitators. But it somehow still keeps the grandiose energy that makes a Weeknd song stick. The thrilling sirens that kick off the track and the Metro Boomin-produced beat’s thick, booming bass, feel like the natural progression of The Weeknd’s sound, moving towards something even bigger and more anthemic than before. Tesfaye even throws in a few run-that-back quotables (“Metro Boomin turn this ho into a mosh pit”) that are destined to keep the track viral.
With The Weeknd’s new sound comes the new visuals as shown in the music video released for “Heartless” on December 3rd. Tesfaye has always had a fascination with the shine and excess of the 1980s — whether sampling Cocteau Twins and Siouxsie and The Banshees on the murky House of Balloons, covering Michael Jackson on Echoes of Silence, or tapping Daft Punk for disco revivals on Starboy, he’s rooted much of his sound in the glossy stardom and dark, druggy undercurrents that defined the decade’s music in popular memory. Here, he plays a new character in that cast, wearing thick-rimmed glasses and an orange suit that make him a perfect fit in the video’s Las Vegas escapades. On the new album we can expect The Weeknd to capture more of this lifestyle and vibe — big-budget nightlife glamour, instead of sexed-up, post-rave hangovers — which marks new territory for him while still keeping close to the R&B-star persona he’s crafted for much of his career.
“Blinding Lights” stands out as a fresh, yet familiar song that could make The Weeknd’s next project compete with his best work. It’s an ‘80s synthpop song, through and through. Recalling tracks like his 2013 Kavinsky collaboration “Odd Look”, everything about this track, from the way the starlit drum-machine beat is layered and textured, to his playful vocal inflections as he leads into the chorus with “go-o-one”, reconstructs that new-wave era without forcing nostalgia. The lyrics might refer, as always, to heartbreak from either of Tesfaye’s celebrity ex-girlfriends: “I’ve been tryna call / I’ve been on my own for long enough.” But the song itself conjures up the glitzy nightlife romance that The Weeknd does so well while offering an exciting template for his future work. After two great singles, Abel Tesfaye’s upcoming album promises to be another solid addition to his discography, polishing his sound towards a fun and refreshing new direction.
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